Episode 255 is all about Nyasasaurus, a 240 million 12 months outdated dinosauriform which may be the earliest identified dinosaur.
Interview with Christopher DiPiazza, a science trainer, paleo artist, and creator of the favored website, Prehistoric Beast of the Week. He covers a special prehistoric animal (practically) each week, with an authentic portray he creates, {a photograph} of the fossil, and each time doable, enter from a paleontologist who labored on that animal. Observe him on twitter or @ChrisDPiazza or Instagram.
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On this episode, we talk about:
Information:
- A brand new early cretaceous carcharodontosaurian, Siamraptor, was found in Thailand supply
- Rebecca Jensen shared her database and map of Dinosaur Nationwide Monument with us supply
- In St. George, Utah, carnivorous dinosaur footprints have been discovered from roughly 200 million years in the past supply
- The Las Vegas Pure Historical past Museum introduced their paleontology workforce discovered 240 million 12 months outdated vertebrate tracks supply
- The Dickinson’s Badlands Dinosaur Museum has a brand new discover, a 77 million 12 months outdated tyrannosaur supply
- New fossils on show, together with a juvenile Triceratops, grownup Triceratops, and a hadrosaur supply
- Maximus, a 70 million 12 months outdated 3m lengthy dinosaur just lately bought for for about $227,000 supply
- Smithsonian Magazine printed an inventory of spots to dig for dinosaur bones supply
- In Sacramento, California, a person in a Allosaurus costume stopped by a Sacramento Metropolis Corridor supply
- Supergirl star, Melissa Benoit, shared a photograph of herself driving a dinosaur and hugging a T. rex supply
The dinosaur of the day: Nyasasaurus
- Dinosauriform that lived within the Center Triassic in what’s now Tanzania (Manda Formation)
- Would be the earliest identified dinosaur
- Described in 1956 by Alan Charig in a doctoral thesis (however not formally described till 2013)
- Holotype discovered within the Thirties by Francis Rex Parrington, together with cynodonts, dicynodonts, and rhynchosaurs
- Alan Charig was certainly one of Francis Parrington’s PhD college students
- Charig first described them as “Specimen 50b”
- In 1967 Charig used the identify Nyasasaurus parringtoni, in a evaluate of Archosauria, however didn’t present any description so it was thought-about a nomen nudum (additionally his dissertation was by no means printed)
- In 2013 Sterling Nesbitt, Paul Barrett, Sarah Werning, and Christian Sidor printed a brand new description (and embrace Alan Charig posthumously) to provide Nyasasaurus parringtoni a sound identify
- Alan Charig died in 1997
- Kind species is Nyasasaurus parringtoni
- Genus identify means “Lake Nyasa lizard”
- Genus identify refers to Lake Nyasa and the species identify is in honor of Parrington
- Earlier than Nyasasaurus, the oldest identified dinosaur was about 231 million years outdated and located in Argentina (Herrerasaurus)
- Nyasasaurus is about 10-15 million years older than that dinosaur
- Kind specimen is a partial skeleton 6.5-9.8 ft (2-3 m) lengthy, and features a proper humerus (higher arm bone), three partial sacral vertebrae and three presacral vertebrae
- A second specimen was discovered that has three cervical vertebrae and two posterior presacral vertebrae, nevertheless it wasn’t clear till Nesbit et. al described the specimen in 2013 that the 2 had been definitively the identical species
- Weighed between 45 to 135 lb (20 to 60 kg)
- No cranium bones discovered, so unclear what it ate
- Not clear if it was bipedal or quadrupedal
- In all probability had a protracted neck and tail
- Onerous to categorise due to fragmentary fossils discovered, however it’s inside Archosauria and inside Dinosauriforms, the group that features birds, non-avian dinosaurs, and a few non-dinosaurian teams that lived within the Triassic
- Considered one of many earliest dinosaurs (earliest identified dinosaur)
- Nesbitt and workforce did a scientific comparability of Nyasasaurus fossils with shut family and located numerous traits that made Nyasasaurus a real dinosaurs, together with three vertebrae within the sacrum (connects the backbone to the pelvis) in comparison with ancestors that solely had two, it grew quickly, primarily based on histology, and it had a broad bone crest on its higher arm which hooked up ought to muscle mass to the higher arm bone (crest was greater than 30% of the bone’s size, and is called an elongated deltopectoral crest); nonetheless, the arm bone was fragmentary so it’s arduous to know for positive if it reallly was greater than 30% of the bone’s size, which made Nesbitt and his workforce not 100% positive Nyasasaurus was a dinosaur (however on the very least it might have been a really shut relative)
- Arm bone had a lot of bone cells and blood vessels within the bone tissues, which signifies speedy progress
- Confirmed Nyasasaurus grew as quick as different early dinosaurs however not as quick as later dinosaurs
- Nyasasaurus in Tanzania helps help the concept of a southern Pangaean origin for dinosaurs
- When early dinosaurs like Eoraptor had been in Argentina 10 million years after Nyasasaurus existed, there have been already various teams of dinosaurs, which meant dinosaurs will need to have been evolving for some time earlier than that
- Proposed that dinosaurs developed and regularly grew to become dominant (as a substitute of there being an explosion of dinosaurs, as beforehand thought), however not all scientists agree (particularly if it seems Nyasasaurus was only a shut relative of dinosaurs as a substitute of a dinosaur)
- Oldest identified silesaurid (closest identified family of dinosaurs), Asilisaurus kongwe, was additionally within the Manda Beds in Tanzania, which exhibits dinosaurs and their shut family co-existed
- The sort specimen is on the Pure Historical past Museum in London
- The second, referred specimen is within the South African Museum in Cape City
Enjoyable Truth:
Sauropods could not have slept a lot if in any respect. At the least not the way in which that we sleep.